Download Eurodesign - BlackBerry

Automating Eurodesign's Field Service with
BlackBerry and Onset's METAmessage Technology
Company
Eurodesign faced a typical manufacturing challenge. Highly
skilled at building and installing kitchen cabinetry for the
building sector, their field installation processes were inefficient.
Since this business process affects every aspect of their customer
service, from managing job acceptance and status to customer
updates, they began searching for a way to automate their
paper-based activities with a performance-enhancing wireless
solution.
Eurodesign
Eurodesign discovered that finding the right wireless solution
could be complex - often driven by matching the users' needs to
the pros and cons of the available solutions. After several
unsuccessful trials with other technologies, Eurodesign chose
BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds™ with the BlackBerry Enterprise
Server™, using Onset Technology's METAmessage® software
solution.
Business Situation
With a pilot project completed, and deployment to 120 users
underway, Eurodesign is excited about the business process
improvements they foresee, such as:
Industry
Manufacturing/Field Service
Solution Overview
Eurodesign's field force used a paper-based
process to receive and act on work orders. Under
this system, the company had no way to easily
track the status of jobs and report back to their
customers or automate their payroll systems.
Solution
· Better reporting to maximize the productivity of the
Eurodesign is a business-to-business cabinet
manufacturer serving the building industry in
California, Nevada and Arizona. The company's
212,000 square-foot manufacturing facility,
located in southern California, is the base for a
field installation crew of 130 technicians and
supervisors.
· The ability to wirelessly transfer hours logged to internal
Benefits
·
Status reports, sent wirelessly from field personnel, will
enable better workflow management by supervisors
workforce
payroll systems
·
Customers will gain better information on the status of their
jobs
· Quick and simple user training
· Very little impact on the existing enterprise infrastructure
Imagine spending the lion's share of your day on a building site,
miles from the factory, with spotty access to cell phone
coverage, and no reliable way of keeping in touch with your
supervisor or company. You rely on work orders you pick up at
the factory to know what job you're on; and when you get the
chance, you return the completed paperwork by fax, or the next
time you see your supervisor.
Deploy 120 BlackBerry® handhelds with the
BlackBerry Enterprise Server to Eurodesign's field
force, sales force and select executives. Onset
Technology's METAmessage software will provide
the connection between messaging and the
company's corporate information systems and
create a simple forms-based interface for more
efficient reporting.
Results
Eurodesign's forms-based reporting system will
help better manage their field personnel, improve
customer service and increase the efficiency of
their operations - while achieving a 250% returnon-investment over two years..
For Eurodesign, a company that prides itself on being forward-thinking and committed to investing in technology,
this system had obvious drawbacks. “Our biggest challenge was not knowing what was going on in the field,”
says Dennis Retherford, VP, Operations. “By the time paperwork was catching up with us, a week or two had
gone by. We had to invest a lot of effort tracking down installers by phone to check their status on a job so we
could report back to our customers.”
En Route to a Wireless Solution
Retherford says his company spent more than a year thoroughly investigating the marketplace in search of a
solution that would put them in closer touch with their field personnel. They tested laptops, digi-tablets that
used a stylus input method, and mini laptops. In each instance, they found limitations.
Devices such as laptops were too cumbersome for people on the move. Many interfaces were too complex for the
user to understand and didn't integrate with the enterprise's back-end systems. Some simply weren't durable
enough to be manhandled on a job site.
Eurodesign then moved to the PDA market, attracted by the portability of the devices. What they gained in
accessibility, they lost in enterprise friendliness. Proprietary technologies on many PDAs made it difficult for
Eurodesign to customize a solution to their needs and to seamlessly interact with their SQL database.
“Right about the time I was really pulling my hair out, I came across BlackBerry and Onset Technology,” says
Retherford. “We installed the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and began a pilot project, implementing Onset
Technology's METAmessage software to automate our work orders. Whoever used BlackBerry felt it was superior
to any previously seen solution, and most loved it 100%.”
Automating a Forms-bbased Reporting System
The field service solution they will have in place involves sending work orders on the BlackBerry handheld. Field
installers can accept or reject a job, indicate when they are onsite, and log their hours. The system will allow
supervisors to better manage their staff by knowing, at-a-glace, if a job has been accepted, started and finished
and, ultimately, if there are any issues related to material shortages.
Once at the job site, field installers will be able to easily log their hours, which will then be sent to the network
for payroll updates. Eurodesign will have faster access to information about the thousands of jobs they manage
to provide better customer service information.
Onset Technology's METAmessage software enables this enhanced productivity with a forms-based solution.
Operating behind the firewall, and supporting Eurodesign's Microsoft® Exchange environment, it uses the email
transport to automatically update and synchronize work orders. Using the METAmessage forms builder,
Eurodesign has customized a series of user-friendly wireless forms on the BlackBerry handhelds.
Eurodesign determined that a forms-based versus a browser-based solution was right for them. With their field
force on building sites, they realized their people couldn't spend precious time trying to find the connectivity
needed for an online browser. METAmessage's store-and-forward model meant that installers could update their
information on the forms-based application, and whether they were in a coverage area or not, BlackBerry would
store and automatically forward the data.
“The criteria for us was always that our installers cannot spend more than 15 seconds updating status,” says
Retherford. “Anything that requires a long login, or waiting for screens to pop up and refresh, means people will
give up midway and never complete the reporting. It has to be quick and seamless - and can't involve having to
pick up a user manual or a lot of key strokes.”
Pilot Project Delivers Promising Results
Eurodesign's pilot project with Onset Technology's forms-based solution has already returned both anecdotal and
calculated ROI. The company automated a few of the forms they will ultimately use on the BlackBerry handheld allowing a supervisor to send a job ticket to an installer and then monitor the job's status.
“We had fantastic results,” says Retherford. “The three-day battery life of the BlackBerry handhelds is very
impressive. And we could see who is online, because they had logged in through their BlackBerry handheld. Our
supervisors and customer service center had an instant picture of where the field force was. We greatly reduced
the amount of effort required to track down people and had a 'Who Is Where' view.”
Retherford has also calculated that the return-on-investment for the combined BlackBerry and Onset Technology
solution will be almost 250%, delivering a savings of nearly $300,000 over two years. His math is based on
assigning a monetary value to every transaction - from sending email to payroll entries. Estimates that he
emphasizes are extremely conservative.
Beyond the fiscal savings, the benefits of this solution for Eurodesign are multi-fold:
· Quicker status reports from field personnel will help supervisors better manage the workflow of the team
· With better reporting, field personnel could be deployed to more jobs, maximizing the productivity of the
workforce
· Field installers' hours will be logged onsite and automatically entered into the payroll system
· Customers will gain better information on the status of their jobs, giving Eurodesign an edge in the
marketplace
· METAmessage and BlackBerry handhelds were quick to rollout in one or two days
· The solution is built on an open rather than a proprietary platform, allowing Eurodesign to customize it
to their future needs
· Administration is simple and integrates with Eurodesign's infrastructure
· User training is quick, simple and minimal
With the highly mobile BlackBerry solution, they hope to improve efficiency in every aspect of the business. One
day, Retherford hopes supervisors in the factory will use BlackBerry handhelds in their jobs, to check the status
of materials moving throughout their large facility.
“It's a great solution,” says Retherford. “In a simple way, it resolves some of the most complex challenges, in
terms of customer service and operational efficiency.”
Savings in Year One with the Combined BlackBerry and Onset Technology Solution
(Calculated over 229 days with 122 potential users)
Activity
Value
Savings
I time-sensitive message/day/user
25 cents/message
$62.50/per user/per year
130 payroll entries/day/user
3 cents/entry
$812.50/per user/per year
180 scheduling entries/day/user
2 cents/entry
$675/per user/per year
Savings on cell phone charges
10 min/day
$26.40/per user/per year
Total Productivity Savings
$2,243.07/per user/per year
(at an hourly rate of $16/hr)
TOTAL OVERALL SAVINGS (for 122 users)
TOTAL COST OF DEPLOYMENT/122 USERS
$273,654.13
$160,035
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RIM, Research In Motion, "Always On, Always Connected", the 'envelope in motion' symbol, BlackBerry and the BlackBerry logo are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be pending
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respective owners. The specifications and features contained in this document are subject to change without notice.